Most Valuable Players

Matt Conger (red pants) makes a fine cheerleader, but teammates like Joey Hartmann (blue jacket) wish he were on the ice instead of the bench.

It started as kind of a joke among sports reporters and fans, but as this past NFL season wore on it began to sound more and more correct. Who was the 2011 NFL MVP? Which player had more of an impact on the success (or failure) of his team than any other? Wasn't it really Peyton Manning? Was any team's season affected by one player more than this year's Indianapolis Colts?

Peyton Manning and Will Gleason (below, white shirt) both
have younger brothers putting up impressive performances
while they recover from injuries.

Sadly, we've got a pair of almost-Peyton Mannings this winter in Franklin County. I say almost not because Will Gleason and Matt Conger aren't as good as Manning -- they definitely are (plus they don't do bad commercials and play for the Patriots biggest rival!). I say almost because the captain-less Enosburg basketball and MVU hockey teams aren't nearly as bad as the Peyton-less Colts.

Though they may not be Colts bad, Enosburg and MVU are definitely hurting without their best players. Gleason broke his wrist on a near dunk with a bad landing and is holding out hope that he might be back for playoffs. Conger broke his femur, so he's holding out hope that he might be able to play some baseball this spring.

Both teams had legit title hopes at the start of the season. Both teams could still win a title, but are far from favorites now. Both teams have other good players and leaders but Gleason and Conger are irreplaceable in many key ways. The two are leaders with incredibly great attitudes, both seniors with valuable experience. It really is a lot like the Colts losing Peyton. Enosburg and MVU may have better supporting casts, but there's no Andrew Luck at the end of the rainbow if they don't come through.

Both teams are struggling a little as they try to adapt and I think they'll improve over the coming weeks. Enosburg recently eked out a win over Milton when the Yellowjackets missed a game-tying free throw with 2 seconds left and fell to a good Winooski team. 

MVU was a train wreck in its loss against Milton last night. I wrote a pretty scathing article about how disgusted I was by the Thunderbirds for tomorrow's Messenger. Last night wasn't so much about talent as it was about attitude for MVU. Missisquoi was so obsessed with the officials that it totally forgot about playing its brand of hockey. The swearing and cheap shots taking place in the third period were embarrassing.

With Conger playing, things would have been different last night. Matt is as calm and quiet as they come and he loves to play the game. He doesn't like bad refs any better than the next guy, 

but he would stick it to them by scoring a goal in spite of them as opposed to swearing at them from the penalty box. I like the kids I know on MVU, they're great kids. But last night I didn't see a single T-Bird who was more concerned with scoring a goal than with all the other crap going on. If Matt had been out there, I know I would have seen at least one. If there was someone on that team who was more disgusted with his teammates than the refs, he didn't speak up on the bench. 

Enosburg has some excellent players behind Gleason. Will's brother Branden is on his way to being as great as him but isn't quite there yet. Derek Blouin and Dallas Desroches can hit open threes better than anyone else in the county and Wyatt Larose is a rock defensively. The problem the Hornets have without Will is creation. Will is the only one of those players who can create his own shot consistently (and create shots for everyone else). Without Will, the other players don't have as many quality shots to knock down. When things were going badly, Will could singlehandedly take over the game for a few possessions and get momentum back. Without him, Enosburg is going to have some trouble stopping a bleed.

MVU also has some great players. Cole Tessier, Donnie Mueller and Caleb Lothian are probably as skilled as Conger but none has his calm demeanor. Everyone on that roster is more likely to be taken out of a game mentally than Matt is. It almost seemed to me like some T-Bird skaters are trying to do too much by themselves to make up for the void left by Conger -- and that's almost impossible to do in hockey.

I really like Matt and Will. Both are supporting their teams (and other teams at their schools, for that matter) just as hard as they can even though both are seniors who may never get to wear the jersey again. Both are genuine kids who don't act like "star" athletes. It broke my heart when I got the news about each injury. Unlike Peyton Manning, neither of these guys is being paid millions of dollars to wear a cast, they just love what they do. I hope each team finds its way and I hope every kid on each roster thanks Matt and Will every single day for their contributions in the face of injuries. 

And who knows, maybe they'll get their own "This is Sportscenter" commercial. But just in case that doesn't happen, I hope they both know they're appreciated, and sorely missed.

...And The Horse You Rode In On

I'll preface this by saying that I'm being a jerk. For tonight, I'm ignoring the mass -- those people who appreciate the local sports coverage the Messenger provides. For tonight, I'm focusing only on the people who have so many gripes and complaints that it's become impossible to keep them inside, the people who wouldn't know appreciation if it scored a first-period hat trick and who wouldn't be able to sleep at night if they hadn't told at least one person how much they sucked that day.

I'm being a jerk. The kind of jerk my father warned me about when I started writing a sports blog. He told me no matter how many nice things I wrote, the only thing I'd ever hear was complaints about anything negative I published. 

"Come on dad! I'm going to write a blog on my own time for no money just so these kids can get even more 'real athlete' treatment. If I spend 800 words talking about how impressed I was with a team they aren't going to only focus on the 50 words I use to talk about their room for improvement."

Dad -1. Ben - 0.

I generally don't mind hearing more criticism than praise. I'm not one of the 1,000 best writers in America and there's plenty I could be doing better.

But this winter has put me over the edge. We hired a new writer for sports at the Messenger. She's incredibly bright and was excited to cover her classmates' games. I found out just a few weeks into the season that players on both varsity basketball teams at HER OWN SCHOOL were making fun of her writing. The very kids we go out of our way to never say anything negative about in print were saying nasty things about one of our writers and one of their classmates. 

Where the hell do these athletes get off making fun of the free press they get? This wasn't criticism, which is totally acceptable. This was petty, crude harassment. So what if there was a mistake about someone's point total? For those who find it necessary to belittle their peers, whether through insecurity or jealousy, we can even the playing field by listing their missed shots, turnovers and rebounds they failed to grab.

The worst offense to date was the revelation of complaints about an apparent lack of MVU girls hockey coverage. Yes, the same MVU team I wrote a glowing piece about a week ago. The one we plastered all over the paper like presidential assassins when it upset BFA. 

The complaint du jour was that we didn't have anything in the Monday edition of the paper about MVU knocking off Essex on the road. The go-to complaint, that we only care about BFA sports, came out early. When some supporters came to our aid and brought up the wild notion that we might not have had something in before deadline, they were dismissed ("It was a Saturday afternoon game, they had plenty of time to meet a deadline!").

It didn't occur to anyone to ask the coach, either (in this instance, the coaches had nothing to do with it, MVU's girls hockey coaches are probably the best in the county at providing us with game info). We generally get the angry phone call when a game isn't covered. Just understand, it's the coach's responsibility to call in a game if we aren't there. If you want more games in the paper, please speak with the team's coach before you bitch to us. 

As an MVU hater (and alumnus, go class of '07!) I couldn't have been happier that we didn't have anything on the game. Then I found out my idiot father, the sports editor, actually did have someone at the game. The Essex newspaper covered the game for us since we do their games in Franklin County. Their small, weekly paper shockingly doesn't have a weekend sports desk, so the coverage had to wait until Tuesday's paper. And to think, I was so close to my goal of eliminating MVU coverage altogether, dammit!

This winter, there are 445 local varsity games scheduled in the span of about 80 days. Take out Sundays with no games, and that's about six games per day. Saturday, there were 11 local varsity games. Of the five hockey games, we elected to cover one. Yep, the aforementioned T-Bird girls.

The options Monday morning for MVU were to scramble and put together A) a few paragraphs with the score, goals and saves, and no photo in Monday's paper, or B) two articles, including a feature on Katie Campbell reaching the remarkable 100-point mark midway through her junior season, and two color photos from the game a whopping 24 hours later. Apparently, Option B was the wrong choice.

I love the BFA/MVU complaints. All year long I get "You guys only care about BFA!" in the left ear and "How come all you cover is MVU?" in the right. I don't even have an ear left for the Enosburg and Fairfax parents (I say parents because the kids are generally happy with what they get, but mommy and daddy think they have John LeClair Jr. in the house and we aren't doing enough to recognize their unbelievable accomplishments). I hope the next person who says "The Messenger only cares about St. Albans" or "Everything is about MVU" finds themselves in front of a Mikaela Flanagan slapshot very soon.

The only folks who should be complaining don't. We often end up covering Richford a little less than our other schools. Unfortunately Richford usually plays fewer games against other Franklin County schools and it's furthest away from most of our staff. But the main thing we hear when we go to Richford is "My kid really loved having his picture in the paper, thank you."

Most kids do like having their picture in the newspaper. And you know what? We like being able to put local athetes in the Messenger. We do as good a job of that as anyone around. We've had people actually complain about only having one or two large, color photos during a season. Take that complaint to the athletes at Burlington, Rutland or CVU and see what kind of reaction you get.

So dad was right. One of the first blogs I did was a piece about a great girls soccer game. I talked about the great things both teams had done then mentioned at the end that I wished one team spent less time focusing on the refs. I was nearly run out of town. All I heard for a month was that I was an ass and why would I even bother writing about kids I "hated". I wrote another piece on a physical game between BFA and MVU and heard a lot more about that piece than the one I wrote about their great rematch. 

I don't expect a pat on the back for the work I do, though I do appreciate the gratitude I often get. What I do expect is our readers to recognize that we go above and beyond what most sports departments do for high school athletes. The big complaint is that you thought we missed one regular season hockey game?!? Call me when we miss a local team winning a state championship. I do mean call me, or e-mail me or send something personal. That's a whole lot more likely to get you an answer to your question about coverage than posting a facebook status about what a shitty job the Messenger does. 

My dumbass sports editor only spends 100+ hours devising a schedule as fair as he can make it (a fair man would spend at least 500!), and is always happy to explain why a game was or was not covered. While you're concerned with your particular team's 20 games or your school's 40 or 80, he is trying to balance coverage of 445 games. If you wonder why there was no story on a game, or no writer/photographer there, send an email to sports@samessenger.com and you'll find out why. Before complaining, find out why you're complaining.

And by the way, while we made sure to get someone to that MVU hockey game in Essex, we didn't get anyone to BFA's home hockey game that night for the first time this year. So let's hear it Comet hockey fans.

DIAL #11 FOR (MIS)INFORMATION

MVU's Matt St Amour selfishly hogs the ball away from an Enosburg player who would have preferred an uncontested lay-up

I’ve been covering high school sports in Vermont for almost eight years. Granted, I’m not exactly a seasoned veteran but after covering hundreds of games and playing in a few hundred more, there aren’t many firsts left for me.

But this afternoon I witnessed a first, and hopefully a last. Nobody expects high school sports fans to be the most rational thinkers. However, I was more disgusted than surprised during the second half of MVU’s 67-39 win at Enosburg when the Hornet student section began chanting “Ballhog! Ballhog!” every time Missisquoi’s Matt St. Amour touched the ball.

I call this a first not because I’ve never heard the “Ballhog” chant before, I have. I’m just quite certain I’ve never heard it shouted at a team’s assist leader. 

Yes, St. Amour leads the Thunderbirds in scoring, by a lot. But he also has almost half of his team’s total assists this year (MVU is averaging 7.8 assists per game, St. Amour is averaging 3.7). He led his team in assists today.

St. Amour might be the best passer I’ve ever seen. It’s tough to tell. Players like BFA’s Ben Cote come to mind as great distributors. But how do we compare St. Amour to anyone when it comes to passing? Most other great passers are pure point guards, St. Amour is not. Most great passers don’t average north of 15 rebounds a game, St. Amour does. 

That’s right, 15+ rebounds a game! Today he collected 19. Maybe the Enosburg fans were just mistaken in their word choice, because he certainly was a rebound-hog today. I guess anyone would look like a ball hog when he pulls down 19 boards. How rude of him to not let anyone else have some rebounds!

I’ll give the Enosburg students this, St. Amour is a scorer. The junior reached 1,000 career points before the new year. He’s already posted a high of 43 this year and smart money says he’ll top that. 

The Hornets gave St. Amour more room to work today than any opponent I’ve seen this season. They lost by 28. 

More room to work doesn’t mean single coverage, he was still doubled quite a bit. It just means Enosburg wasn’t willing to send an athlete to the hospital to try to win a game.

What made the “Ballhog!” chant so ridiculous today was the fact that St. Amour scored just 22 points, one of his lowest season totals. He used the extra space to pick up six assists and at least another six passes that helped set up a basket. His nicest pass of the day was a beauty to the low post right in front of a group of Enosburg students chanting “Ballhog!” St. Amour even looked toward the student section after that pass and flicked his jersey, which was the classy thing to do as opposed to yelling “SHUT THE &^*% UP!” (which is the route I would have chosen). 

If MVU coach Jim Bose made any decision other than to run the ball through St. Amour on every single possession, he’d be run out of town. St. Amour’s supporting cast is improving (St. Amour played well in MVU’s two losses to Enosburg as well, today’s win was the first time the rest of the team played this well), but you don’t waste a talent like St. Amour.

I’ve seen plenty of great high school basketball players; I had the misfortune of usually playing against Cote and Burlington’s Tyrone Conley, but I still found time to watch while they were lighting me up. BFA’s Nick Swim, Enosburg’s Jade Desroches and Fairfax’s Seth Rebeor also come to mind right away. Those players might all have been as good as St. Amour (Conley might have been better, but I may be biased because he scored roughly 12,351 points against my teams from 5th-12th grade), but none of them had the “don’t look down" effect that St. Amour does. 

When I’m covering a game, if I need to adjust my camera or send a text message or make a note I just do it. Except when St. Amour has the ball in his hands. It seems like every single game he does something I’ve never seen before. Whatever I need to do can wait until St. Amour gives up the ball because I don't want to miss whatever's happening next.

Of course, sometimes he does that without the ball in his hands. St. Amour had one block today that would have made Dikembe Mutumbo jealous. Well, I say one, I mean one in each half.

In the second half today, St. Amour went to the bench to get a towel so he could clean up some sweat he’d left on the ground after drawing a foul. It must have been a nice break for the Enosburg defenders since he’d been using them to mop the floor most of the night. 

I’ve never seen a player so universally hated simply because he’s good. Enosburg’s aren’t the only fans who call him a ball hog. It seems like fans of opponents are grasping for anything because it would seem wrong to chant about what a well rounded basketball player (and incredibly nice person) St. Amour is. 

I think it goes without saying that I’ll be catching as much St. Amour as I can. To this point in the season, Enosburg had been the best team I’d seen. The Hornets beat MVU 2 out of 3 chances I have no doubt they could make it 3 of 4 if given another shot. I fully expect to watch the Hornets play for a Division III title in Barre this spring, which makes today’s performance all the more impressive for MVU.

And if I have to settle for watching a ball hog every time I watch the Thunderbirds, I think I’ll be ok with that. As long as I don't have to look down.